Media practices related to migration and intra-EU mobility in the EU-10 Member States
May 8, 2018
Working Paper
This paper of work package 11 offers an overview of interview and survey findings on how the media cover issues of mobility and migration in four Central/Eastern European countries, including in Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovenia.
The paper argues that despite similarities in the recent histories of these countries, issues of mobility and migration are covered differently across the region (e.g. highest on the public agenda in Hungary, followed by Poland, and Slovenia and Romania). The author also argues that immigration has been a major issue on the public agenda since 2015, dividing some of these societies, even though relatively few migrants and refugees from beyond the European Union have actually stayed in the region.
Also, emigration – including both intra-European mobility as well as, to a lesser extent, emigration to third countries – is as much an issue as immigration and has had severe economic and demographic effects. While all countries across the region have been severely affected by massive emigration to Western Europe, the media address the issue to different degrees across the region: it is a widely discussed topic in Romania and, to lesser degrees, in Poland and Slovenia, whereas it is almost completely ignored in Hungary.
